Ethanol can be used in most modern vehicles with little modification to the fuel system. A person driving a flexfuel vehicle can't tell the difference between running on E85 or on gasoline. The changes required to get ethanol to make an impact are far less significant.

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There are very few changes that need to be made to run biodiesel. I know plenty of people running their own diesels on it with simply a fuel filter change. And very few people have flex fuel vehicles. Plus if you pay attention to your gas mileage you will most definately see a difference between running E85 and gas. Just check out the difference on a flex fuel HHR. 32 hwy vs 23 with E85
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/2008car1tablef.jsp?id=25762

If we are going to pick a fuel to put some economic muscle behind, Ethanol is a horrible choice. I see no benefits to ethanol over other biofuels and plenty of real problems. The only reason i see ethanol making ground if corn lobbiests and a general public confusion that biofuel == only ethanol.

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I agree. The high energy inputs required to produce ethanol along with it's poor energy output make it more a scheme to move taxpayer money from your pockets to big agri conglomerates bottom line, than any kind of viable fuel source.

Yes Biodiesel is relatively easy to convert and has a much higher energy content, but considering the fleet is probably about 1% diesel, that route is almost irrelevant.

I think this whole food to fuel movement is obscene and we shouldn't be looking to further it. We are talking about 1 years worth of food being displaced by one fill-up. This is totally nuts.

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i agree there are few diesels on the road ( i assume that is what you mean by the fleet is 1% diesel) but that does not mean diesel is irrelevant. People purchase new cars (well not this year). We cant expect to find a solution in a short period and we cant let the current car fleet dictate our decisions. That is just plain dumb. Electric cars are not irrellevant simply because they make up less than 1%.

Also biodiesel works with existsing infrastructure. No transportation problems like Ethanol.

I agree choice is a good thing and like Steve-O said
"I'm all for the market determining everything"

Me too so let the market figure it out and STOP THE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES. Ethanol will die on its own without the govt help keeping it alive.

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In practical terms, the key advantage ethanol (and other alcohols such as methanol) has is that it is backward compatible.

UNLIKE diesel, a flex fuel car can fill up on its alternative fuel, alcohol whenever it can, but also can revert to using gasoline whenever it must.

That is the crucial, major advantage that ethanol has. It makes the transition away from gasoline something practical, not just endless decades of dreaming. Practical and affordable.

Get it now?

I'll skip the geo strategic issues (diesel still comes from petroleum, controlled by OPEC), the environmental issues (diesel is even dirtier, and produces more smog, than gasoline), etc. for now to focus on that one issue.

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We dont need bandaids we need fixes. Ethanol, being a terrible biofuel, is a bandaid. Let the free market determine what is best, dont force Ethanol on people.

Biodiesel cars are as backwards compatible with diesel as ethanol cars are with gas. Biodiesel cars are far far more efficient than Ethanol. Algae biodiesel yields 10,000-15,000 gallons per acre, and does not require fertile land. Ethanol yields 400 gallons, takes up food resources, requires petroleum based fertilizers, requires huge amounts of water, and uses up our fertile land.

Get it now?

After reading your posts I think you are confused and dont know what Biodiesel is. You should read up on it sometime. The options are not just gas, diesel, and ethanol.

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BoneHeadOtto, biodiesel is better than petrodiesel since it is renewable, not dependent on OPEC and reduces particulate output 20%. However reducing particulates compared to petrodiesel is not a huge accomplishment; petrodiesel is a remarkably filthy fuel, which can be easily seen by looking at any large truck on the road spewing great clouds of gray/black smoke into the air, and covered with a gray film too.

But there's another diesel, DME (di methyl ether), an excellent diesel fuel, which produces NO particulate output. I'd rather slash particulates 100% than 20%. Wouldn't you? I remind you that smog produced from smoke, soot, and particulate matter kills 40,000 people a year in America alone.

Plus, DME is made by reacting methanol to itself. Thus it fits neatly into an alcohol economy. And recall that methanol can be made (today, no further research necessary) from sewage, garbage, weeds, "black liquor" from paper mills, or ANY biomass without exception.

Diesel is best suited for large vehicles (ships, trains, large trucks) which are relatively small in numbers and for which the refueling and industrial infrastructure conversion issues are less intense, particularly since so many are fleet vehicles that return to one spot for refueling.

For the scores of millions of personal, light duty vehicles, alcohol is better, particularly because of the gasoline compatibility factor which makes the transition much easier.

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bdP while i agree that electric cars are teh ultimate answer the battery tech will not be there for a long time (atleast for economic total conversion of all vehicles) So we still need fuels. Electric cars have the luxury of really letting the market determine our energy creation methods. It makes so much more sense to create energy large scale than under the hood. Plus like you mentioned you can get the electricity from a large number of clean sources

but you said
"You can't effectively grow fuel. Just doesn't make sense in ANY form! "

Not correct. according to wikipedia algae can produce 10000 gallons per acre and its biodiesel contains 130,000 btu. Higher than gas and nearly twice that of ethanol. With the algae greenhouses, very little water and land is used, and no food sources are touched.

Actually many people believe that oil in the ground is a byproduct of bacteria under the ground, as seem by many seemingly empty oil reserves filling back up. Im not sure how much evidence there is for that but we surely are not burning decomposed dinos.

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If people keep repeating this oil company right wing propaganda that has been proven false so many times on so many levels we will never be energy independent.

First, BTU is a measure of heating value. We are not interested in heat in an engine we are interested in power and efficiency and ethanol is over twice as efficient as gasoline. The average gas engine on the road today is at best at 20% thermal efficiency but an engine built to run ethanol easily reaches 43% thermal efficiency. Do the math. This was documented by Mathew Brusstar for the EPA in a Society of Automotive Engineers Tech paper 2002-01-2743.

In the early 1900's gov't labs were achieving 40 to 55% efficiency with ethanol engines.

Second, ehtnaol production, unlike gasoline porduction does not produce waste. Everything that is produced making ethanol is a useful coproduct in its own right. It can be used as fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, animal feed, human food suplements, etc, etc...

Third, ethanol is very energy positive. In Brazil the distilleries use no utility power at all. The sugar can supplies all the heat and electricity they use and provides so much excess electricity that they sell on average 77% of the electricity generated back to the grid. The ethanol distilleries have become the most reliable source of electricity in Brazil.

Fourth, it has been proven that every dollar in ethanol subsidies produces a positive net for the treasury. One study showed that 1.8 billion in ethanol subsidies returned 4.5 billion to the treasury for a net positve of 2.7 billion. That has never happened wit gasoline which is the most highly subsidized fuel in this country. If you factor in all the taxes you paid that went to oil companies over the years you never paid less than $5 a gallon for gas and some estimates place it at closer to $15 a gallon.

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I haven't been within a mile of an oil refinery in over 15 years. But it didn't smell half as bad as being near a pig farm. Was there a point in that?

You are living in some kind of dreamworld if you think biofuels are going to displace petroleum.

The anti-boondoggle crowd has no idea of using ethanol with low impact, because it can't be done. High energy inputs into producing ethanol, factory farming with fertilizer run offs etc, extreme water usage all make ethanol production very high impact.

Then you are forced to burn E10 in a lot of places. Many meticulous mileage recorders report almost 10% drop in fuel economy burning E10 so it isn't saving any fuel at all.

The is one massive taxpayer funded boondoggle making a fuel Agri-Barons rich with subsidies from from us. Oh and pushing up food prices so we pay the price yet again.

This boondoggle is obscenely FUBAR.

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All good points and i think we would all agree that there are kinds ethanol that can work but corn ethanol is not a good option. It takes large amounts of pertroleum based fertilizer to even grow corn not to mention large amounts of water. Sugar cane, cat tails, anything that grows better than corn would be a better option.

Just because someone can create a more efficient Ethanol engine in a lab does not mean that ethanol can be made more efficient in a production vehicle. I would love to drive a car on ethanol made from a non food crop, but so far all flex fuel vehicles have been less efficient than their gas counterparts.

But none of us are saying stick with gas and abandon Ethanol. But most of us feel that biodiesel is a better option, specifically algae based biodiesel. Diesel engines are currently more efficient than gas.

But honestly im not an expert in this subject. But from the evidence ive seen corn based Ethanol is a joke, and the free market is not at play in its production and promotion.

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BoneHeadOtto, it doesn't take "large" amounts of petroleum to make alcohol. Even now when we use petroleum fuel for generators, tractors, trucks, and barges, for every gallon of petroleum used (fertilizers, fuel, etc.), we get back MORE than TEN gallons of alcohol.

Those are not my figures; they are from the Berkeley Energy & Resources Group, published in the January 2006 issue of "Science", which, along with "Nature", is THE leading peer-reviewed scientific journal in the world. What's particularly significant is that this paper is not just a single quickie study, it's a comprehensive survey of ALL PRIOR peer-reviewed on the subject. Thus, it's the scientific consensus, settled science.

C'mon you have to admit that an OVER 90% reduction in petroleum is pretty good. And when we switch those generators, tractors, trucks, and barges to alcohol fuel, the quantity of petroleum needed to make ethanol falls even further.

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